The Future PC

Contents

Nanochips Coaxing single atoms into place to make the tiniest of transistors (nanotechnology) will extend the life of existing silicon techniques for a good ten years or more. By 2007, Intel expects to have a 1-billion-transistor, 20-GHz chip, making complex voice commands and language translation a snap. Get much smaller and electrons start to act more like waves than like particles, quantum mechanics kicks in, qubits replace bits, and processing speed hits the stratosphere. (IBM, Intel, Oxford University)

Half-Pound PCs IBM is getting extreme about minimizing. Its MetaPad condenses the core of a PC (microprocessor, graphics controller, hard disk, and memory) into a PDA-size package, so you can easily carry your entire computer with you anywhere. Everything else becomes an accessory that plugs into its docking station. Expected ship date: 2006.

Photonic Fibers Thin air may the fastest route to superspeed Internet connections. Today, data in the form of light travels through fiber-optic threads made of glass, but light leaks out, and the signal gets weak. Shoot the light through thin air (actually, the hollow core of photonic-crystal fibers) and the signal stays pretty intense. And it's cheap, since there are no outrageously expensive amplifiers under the oceans to repair. (Corning, MIT, Omni-Guide Communications, University of Bath)

Desktop Chip Fab Download instructions for the latest microprocessor from the Web and print the chip out using "semiconductor ink" on a sheet of plastic. Instead of etching circuits onto silicon in a billion-dollar factory, this special ink prints them, pronto. Big problem: The speed of silicon is about 1,000 times as fast. Lots of work to do here. (MIT)

Roll-Up Displays Take a concoction of organic stuff like pentacene (for low-temperature flexibility) and inorganic stuff like a Perovskite (for speed), print it onto a thin piece of plastic, and you've got flexible transistors perfect for a roll-up display. The same technique could turn out paperback e-books and maybe even computer chips. (IBM, Lucent, MIT, Penn State)

Magnetic Memory You can count on your computer's memory to forget every bit of information it knows once you shut the power off. But if data is stored magnetically (as on a hard drive) instead of electrically, it never forgets. Magnetic memory, in development at IBM, is fast and high-capacity, so you'll never have to boot a computer again. Just flip the switch and it's on.

Thinking Caps Technologies for the disabled are fueling the most mind-boggling advances, such as input devices thatbelieve it or notcapture your thoughts. Wrap your head around this: An electrode-studded cap picks up brain waves, delivers them to an EEG machine, and feeds the results to software that can maneuver a wheelchair or type text. As for the able-bodied, a brain interface can provide new forms of education and entertainment. Some of the kinks: A mini EEG machine needs to be developed, and who really wants to wear a swim cap at work? (Joint Research Center of the European Commission)